Richard Davenport
July 13, 2025 – Proper 10
Leviticus 18:1-5, 19:9-18
The book of Leviticus is almost entirely laws of one sort or another. There are little bits of activity here and there, such as when Aaron offers the first sacrifice as high priest and blesses the people with the benediction for the first time. Fire comes down from heaven to consume the sacrifice and the light of God’s glory shines on all the people.
Most of the rest of Leviticus revolves around the various laws God gives the Israelites. A lot of it has to due with the sacrificial system. Given that it’s the primary way most Israelites will interact with God, it’s important to understand what it’s about and how it can be used properly. God explains why he is giving them these laws. These laws are for their own good. He is the God who brought them out of Egypt and he knows how the people who live in the land of Canaan now act, and they are not to follow in the footsteps of those people. God is holy. He is different than all of the other gods the world has created. If the Israelites are to be his people, they will have to be holy like the God they follow is holy. They will have to look and act different from the rest of the world. These laws are to show them what that means.
Of course, the centerpiece of God’s law is the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments aren’t just guides for good conduct and living. They aren’t just given to Israel. They are the foundation for how all of creation is intended to work. Even if you could somehow follow every other law, command, and directive God gives, if you aren’t keeping the Ten Commandments, then you still have nothing. The Ten Commandments are the structure creation is built upon and they were there from the very beginning. While every sin can probably be classified in multiple ways, every sin is, at its core, a breaking of the 1st Commandment. Adam and Eve sought to be their own gods, and so they set themselves against the one true God, bringing death into the world.
Thinking about all of God’s laws and commands, there are a number that are no longer pertinent to us. We aren’t like some churches, who argue that we’re more enlightened than ancient people and so many of God’s laws just don’t apply anymore. Rather, we recognize that some laws were intended specifically for the nation of Israel. They were to be holy, set apart. What that looks like today isn’t necessarily what that looked like thousands of years ago.
Even two thousand or so years ago, when St. Paul is talking to the different churches, he gives a number of directives too. “Women shouldn’t walk around with their heads uncovered”, he says. Many Christians today think that’s a silly idea and just throw it out. But, the problem is that St. Paul isn’t really interested in head coverings. He’s trying to address the problem of wives who act like they can do whatever they want in their relationship because their husbands have no authority. Two thousand years ago, women who walked around with their heads uncovered were giving that impression to those around them, whether they meant to or not. Nowadays, head coverings don’t make much of a difference in our society. We might instead say that wives who don’t take their husband’s last name are making a similar statement.
Still, going back to Israel, much of what they did isn’t pertinent to us. We no longer make use of the sacrificial system. Christ is the ultimate and final sacrifice. Only his blood can truly pay for sins and he has offered it on our behalf. There simply isn’t any need to offer more rams, sheep, goats, and whatnot. None of that actually paid for sins anyway. It was always intended as a response to those that God had forgiven. It was a way for them to know God had wiped the slate clean and the consequence had been paid by another.
Priests don’t have to be descendants of Aaron. We don’t have plots of land that are handed down from father to sons from generation to generation. We don’t celebrate all of the same festivals. We have many holy days in the church year, but they are not requirements in the same way they were back in the days of Israel. God is not going to cast you out of the church because you aren’t able to be in church on Pentecost, Christmas, or even Easter. That’s not to say you should skip them. There is a lot of value to being in church for those major events in Christ’s life, but, in the strictest sense, your salvation is not dependent on any one particular church service.
So we go back to the Ten Commandments and everything that flows from those commandments. Sure, Jesus explains that the Ten Commandments are actually pretty broad. You can’t really claim to be keeping them, but at least you have an idea what you should be trying to do. Luther expounds on this as well, going into great depth into not just what the Ten Commandments forbid, but also what they tell us we should be doing instead.
It’s a lot to handle. Because of sin, it’s an impossible task already, but even still it’s a lot to remember. The Ten Commandments alone are enough to occupy us and keep us working, not that we have to earn our salvation, but that we need to do better about putting God’s word into action in our lives.
At least with the Ten Commandments, we can say that we’re working on them. Since those are the big laws God gives, if we’re trying to follow them, then we can rest assured that we’re covering the most important ones. The little stuff isn’t as big a deal. We don’t need to stress over other laws and commands as long as we take care of the big ones. We do still need forgiveness for all of the times we fail to keep the Ten Commandments, but we know that and we can keep working on it. That’s more than enough for us.
The laws God gives to the Israelites here in Leviticus may not be the Ten Commandments, but they have an important purpose still. They were there for the good of the people. While these laws might have directly said, “You shall not murder,” or “You shall not steal,” they still descend from those same commandments.
As with many things in life, there’s the sense that things don’t always have to be perfect, they just need to be good enough. Someone puts a big dent in your car door. It’s fixable. Insurance covers that sort of thing. There’s a bunch of paint missing, but you don’t need the paint for the car to drive or even to be safe. Do you pay to get it repainted, or do you just tell them that getting the dents out is good enough?
God doesn’t give a lot of guidance for that sort of thing. There’s nothing that says you can only drive a car that looks shiny and new. Driving around Fort Smith, you see a lot of people who are obviously not worried about that kind of thing at all. But, getting your car repainted isn’t something God spells out in his law. He leaves that to you to sort out. You weigh out matters of stewardship, safety, and anything else that might come up to determine the best course of action.
Since a lot of things in life do just fine in the “good enough” category, we tend to apply the same thinking to God’s laws. If I generally manage to keep the Ten Commandments, then all of the little stuff can probably slide. It isn’t as important and I have enough to do just managing those Ten Commandments.
Harvesting your grain right up to the edges, putting a stumbling block in front of a blind man, and failing to pay a hired worker on time might not be specifically mentioned in the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Commandments cover all of that and more. Still, the issue here isn’t so much whether we keep the Ten Commandments as it is what we consider important. As with so many other things, we find it easy to give ourselves a pass, to lower the bar, even when we don’t have the authority to do so. We let some things slide because we consider them less important, but none of them are less important. Each of them is showing us how to care for others and how to hold God in the honor and respect that is due him.
Do we need to refrain from harvesting every last morsel in order to remain the people of Israel? No. That was never the point anyway. The laws showed us things that should have been evident to anyone who wasn’t tainted by sin. Before their fall, Adam and Eve would have done these things without any thought at all. We are not so fortunate. Our dulled minds can’t figure things like this out without God’s help. So he gives us examples, many examples. But they all refer us back to the same root, love of God and love of neighbor.
Where we give ourselves a pass, God does not. He doesn’t give us a pass, nor does he give himself a pass. He doesn’t expect anything from us that he, himself, is unwilling to do. Jesus fulfills the law, every letter. Yet, even though he fulfills the law, he takes the penalty of all of those who fail to keep it. He shows us what it means to love perfectly, while also showing us the what comes for those who do not.
This is where God’s love shines brightest, giving Jesus our penalty while giving us his perfect fulfillment. We are given Jesus’ life. We are given his love. Everything God directs us to do for others is first given to us. That also means when God forgives, he forgives everything. Not just the things we consider big, but also everything else. We need all of it, and so he forgives all of it, leaving nothing out.
God’s laws remain, not as a list of things to do to be an Israelite, but as ways to show love to others. God’s love comes to us in big and small ways, and so we are also given large and small ways to love others. All of them matter. All of them make someone else’s life a little better. All of them show that God cares about every little thing that goes on in your life because he made all of it. God doesn’t want us to let the little things slide. Rather, he delights in them too. As forgiven Christians, look to the Commandments as guides for ways to show God’s love to others, just as he has given that love to you.